Creativity and Its Discontents

Download Creativity and Its Discontents PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822350823
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Creativity and Its Discontents by : Laikwan Pang

Download or read book Creativity and Its Discontents written by Laikwan Pang and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laikwan Pang offers a complex critical analysis of creativity, creative industries, and the impact of Western copyright laws on creativity in China.

Innovation and Its Discontents

Download Innovation and Its Discontents PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400837340
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Innovation and Its Discontents by : Adam B. Jaffe

Download or read book Innovation and Its Discontents written by Adam B. Jaffe and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-27 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States patent system has become sand rather than lubricant in the wheels of American progress. Such is the premise behind this provocative and timely book by two of the nation's leading experts on patents and economic innovation. Innovation and Its Discontents tells the story of how recent changes in patenting--an institutional process that was created to nurture innovation--have wreaked havoc on innovators, businesses, and economic productivity. Jaffe and Lerner, who have spent the past two decades studying the patent system, show how legal changes initiated in the 1980s converted the system from a stimulator of innovation to a creator of litigation and uncertainty that threatens the innovation process itself. In one telling vignette, Jaffe and Lerner cite a patent litigation campaign brought by a a semi-conductor chip designer that claims control of an entire category of computer memory chips. The firm's claims are based on a modest 15-year old invention, whose scope and influenced were broadened by secretly manipulating an industry-wide cooperative standard-setting body. Such cases are largely the result of two changes in the patent climate, Jaffe and Lerner contend. First, new laws have made it easier for businesses and inventors to secure patents on products of all kinds, and second, the laws have tilted the table to favor patent holders, no matter how tenuous their claims. After analyzing the economic incentives created by the current policies, Jaffe and Lerner suggest a three-pronged solution for restoring the patent system: create incentives to motivate parties who have information about the novelty of a patent; provide multiple levels of patent review; and replace juries with judges and special masters to preside over certain aspects of infringement cases. Well-argued and engagingly written, Innovation and Its Discontents offers a fresh approach for enhancing both the nation's creativity and its economic growth.

Creativity and Its Discontents

Download Creativity and Its Discontents PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
ISBN 13 : 3110327856
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (13 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Creativity and Its Discontents by : Alan Wyk

Download or read book Creativity and Its Discontents written by Alan Wyk and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I do not expect a good reception from professional philosophers" wrote Whitehead in 1929, immediately after the publication of Process and Reality. Indeed, it took nearly thirty years before scholars seriously started to try to decipher the book taken as a whole. And there remains today "professional" Whiteheadians who claim that this work can - or even should - be bracketed by anyone wishing to get a clear picture of Whitehead's true speculative agenda. Creativity and Its Discontents aims to provide evidence of the conditions for this state of affairs by gathering and contextualizing all the major reviews (translated where need be) of Process and Reality: its original 1929 edition, its various translations (some of them still ongoing) and its 1978 corrected edition. It is designed as the ideal tool to accompany the recently published Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought.

Creativity and Affect

Download Creativity and Affect PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Praeger
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Creativity and Affect by : Melvin P. Shaw

Download or read book Creativity and Affect written by Melvin P. Shaw and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1994 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors of this volume attempt to cohere the field of creativity and affect in a scholarly fashion by categorizing and characterizing some of its major features, including environmental influences; underlying processes; specific affective states; the role of atypical or pathological personalities; unconscious processes; physiological components; proactive and reactive stimuli; intrinsic motivation; eminence versus everyday creativity; and testing of assessing the affective component of creativity. The authors also examine and discuss the role that emotions, feelings and moods play in the creative process. This volume also provides a vehicle for students and psychotherapists, with which they can fully appreciate the feelings generated by the creative process and the various stages of it. How does a creator feel during its more mundane phases? Can he or she tolerate the frustration of failing and being unsuccessful most of the time? What is the real joy of achievement, success, and ultimate acceptance by one's peers in a given field? Do we have to exhibit major psychopathological features in order to achieve eminence in specific fields? What is the role of mind altering substances, mood disorders, and the like? This volume answers these questions and more.

On Creativity and the Unconscious

Download On Creativity and the Unconscious PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0061718696
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (617 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis On Creativity and the Unconscious by : Sigmund Freud

Download or read book On Creativity and the Unconscious written by Sigmund Freud and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-03-03 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Creativity and the Unconscious brings together Freud's important essays on the many expressions of creativity—including art, literature, love, dreams, and spirituality. This diverse collection includes "The 'Uncanny,'" "The Moses of Michelangelo," "The Psychology of Love," "The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming," "On War and Death," and "Dreams and Telepathy."

Worldmaking: Psychology and the Ideology of Creativity

Download Worldmaking: Psychology and the Ideology of Creativity PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1137408057
Total Pages : 462 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (374 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Worldmaking: Psychology and the Ideology of Creativity by : Michael Hanchett Hanson

Download or read book Worldmaking: Psychology and the Ideology of Creativity written by Michael Hanchett Hanson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Hanchett Hanson weaves together the history of the development of the psychological concepts of creativity with social constructivist views of power dynamics and pragmatic insights. He provides an engaging, thought-provoking analysis to interest anyone involved with creativity, from psychologists and educators to artists and philosophers.

The Oxford Handbook of Creative Industries

Download The Oxford Handbook of Creative Industries PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191062278
Total Pages : 560 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Creative Industries by : Candace Jones

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Creative Industries written by Candace Jones and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-07-23 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Creative Industries is a reference work, bringing together many of the world's leading scholars in the application of creativity in economics, business and management, law, policy studies, organization studies, and psychology. Creative industries research has become a regular theme in academic journals and conferences across these subjects and is also an important agenda for governments throughout the world, while business people from established companies and entrepreneurs revaluate and innovate their models in creative industries. The Handbook is organized into four parts: Following the editors' introduction, Part One on Creativity includes individual creativity and how this scales up to teams, social networks, cities, and labour markets. Part Two addresses Generating and Appropriating Value from Creativity, as achieved by agents and organizations, such as entrepreneurs, stars and markets for symbolic goods, and considers how performance is measured in the creative industries. Part Three covers the mechanics of Managing and Organizing Creative Industries, with chapters on the role of brokerage and mediation in creative industry networks, disintermediation and glocalisation due to digital technology, the management of project-based organzations in creative industries, organizing events in creative fields, project ecologies, Global Production Networks, genres and classification and sunk costs and dynamics of creative industries. Part Four on Creative Industries, Culture and the Economy offers chapters on cultural change and entrepreneurship, on development, on copyright, economic spillovers and government policy. This authoritative collection is the most comprehensive source of the state of knowledge in the increasingly important field of creative industries research. Covering emerging economies and new technologies, it will be of interest to scholars and students of the arts, business, innovation, and policy.

Capitalism and Its Discontents

Download Capitalism and Its Discontents PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Hoover Press
ISBN 13 : 9780817943134
Total Pages : 28 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (431 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Capitalism and Its Discontents by :

Download or read book Capitalism and Its Discontents written by and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Storm of Creativity

Download The Storm of Creativity PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262330601
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Storm of Creativity by : Kyna Leski

Download or read book The Storm of Creativity written by Kyna Leski and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-11-13 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stages of the creative process—from “unlearning” to beginning again—seen through examples from the practice of artists, architects, poets, and others. Although each instance of creativity is singular and specific, Kyna Leski tells us, the creative process is universal. Artists, architects, poets, inventors, scientists, and others all navigate the same stages of the process in order to discover something that does not yet exist. All of us must work our way through the empty page, the blank screen, writer's block, confusion, chaos, and doubt. In this book, Leski draws from her observations and experiences as a teacher, student, maker, writer, and architect to describe the workings of the creative process. Leski sees the creative process as being like a storm; it slowly begins to gather and take form until it overtakes us—if we are willing to let it. It is dynamic, continually in motion; it starts, stops, rages and abates, ebbs and flows. In illustrations that accompany each chapter, she maps the arc of the creative process by tracing the path of water droplets traveling the stages of a storm. Leski describes unlearning, ridding ourselves of preconceptions; only when we realize what we don't know can we pose the problem that we need to solve. We gather evidence—with notebook jottings, research, the collection of objects—propelling the process. We perceive and conceive; we look ahead without knowing where we are going; we make connections. We pause, retreat, and stop, only to start again. To illustrate these stages of the process, Leski draws on examples of creative practice that range from Paul Klee to Steve Jobs, from the discovery of continental drift to the design of Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Familia. Creativity, Leski tells us, is a path with no beginning or end; it is ongoing. This revelatory view of the creative process will be an essential guide for anyone engaged in creative discovery. The Creative Process Unlearning Problem Making Gathering and Tracking Propelling Perceiving and Conceiving Seeing Ahead Connecting Pausing Continuing

Masculinity and Its Discontents

Download Masculinity and Its Discontents PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000405826
Total Pages : 135 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Masculinity and Its Discontents by : Michael J. Diamond

Download or read book Masculinity and Its Discontents written by Michael J. Diamond and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-06-24 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a uniquely psychoanalytic developmental perspective on male gender identity and the sense of maleness, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the development of masculinity in childhood and its continued evolution throughout a man’s life. Drawing on classical Freudian theory, as well as on more contemporary psychoanalytic theories, this book explores early infancy and child development, preoedipal factors and the oedipal complex, the influence of parenting and the unconscious transmission of gendered factors both by mothers and both biological and symbolic fathers, the male ego ideal, social, cultural, and biological influences, the role of inherent psychic bi-genderality in the context of gender binaries, and the inherent gendered tensions and challenges experienced as an individual progresses into adult and later life. This book is original in its characterization of the male developmental trajectory as underpinned by psychoanalytic principles pertaining to conflict and inherent tensions that continue throughout the life cycle and strongly impact other areas of life. Deeply rooted in the unconscious, a man’s multiply determined sense of masculinity requires deconstructing the mother, the feminine, and the other in the male psyche. As the text illustrates via clinical vignettes, an awareness and an understanding of these areas can improve the clinical work of psychoanalysts working with men who struggle with the intrinsic conflicts in their sense of maleness. This book will be of great clinical value to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and other mental health practitioners, and will stimulate the thinking of scholars in such areas as gender theory, psychodynamic and sociocultural aspects of gender roles, and the changing social definition of masculinity.

The Shape of Ideas

Download The Shape of Ideas PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Abrams
ISBN 13 : 1683350316
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (833 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Shape of Ideas by : Grant Snider

Download or read book The Shape of Ideas written by Grant Snider and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Snider has] created something unique: a synthesis of comics, philosophy, and poetry: a thoughtful new way of packaging eternal ideas in cartoon boxes.” —The Los Angeles Review of Books What does an idea look like? And where do they come from? Grant Snider’s illustrations will motivate you to explore these questions, inspire you to come up with your own answers and, like all Gordian knots, prompt even more questions. Whether you are a professional artist or designer, a student pursuing a creative career, a person of faith, someone who likes walks on the beach, or a dreamer who sits on the front porch contemplating life, this collection of one- and two-page comics will provide insight into the joys and frustrations of creativity, inspiration, and process—no matter your age or creative background. “A creative kaleidoscope of humor, insight, and truth. An inventive window into the creative experience filled with hope and encouragement for daydreamers and doodlers, sketchers and scribblers, inventors, explorers, and spinners of yarns.” —Clare Vanderpool, New York Times-bestselling, Newbery Medal-winning author “Grant Snider’s work delivers introspection, humor, and inspiration in visually stunning drawings. They are a colorful look into the creative process—from the moments of quiet contemplation to the days of frenzied desperation.” —Susan Cain, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking “A friendly, encouraging depiction of the creative process, with its highs and lows, from a comics creator.” —The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

The Creative Self

Download The Creative Self PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Academic Press
ISBN 13 : 0128099054
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (28 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Creative Self by : Maciej Karwowski

Download or read book The Creative Self written by Maciej Karwowski and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2017-02-22 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Creative Self reviews and summarizes key theories, studies, and new ideas about the role and significance self-beliefs play in one’s creativity. It untangles the interrelated constructs of creative self-efficacy, creative metacognition, creative identity, and creative self-concept. It explores how and when creative self-beliefs are formed as well as how creative self-beliefs can be strengthened. Part I discusses how creativity plays a part in one’s self-identity and its relationship with free will and efficacy. Part II discusses creativity present in day-to-day life across the lifespan. Part III highlights the intersection of the creative self with other variables such as mindset, domains, the brain, and individual differences. Part IV explores methodology and culture in relation to creativity. Part V, discusses additional constructs or theories that offer promise for future research on creativity. Explores how beliefs about one’s creativity are part of one’s identity Investigates the development of self-beliefs about creativity Identifies external and personality factors influencing self-beliefs about creativity Incorporates worldwide research with cross-disciplinary contributors

China's Creative Industries

Download China's Creative Industries PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1849804702
Total Pages : 169 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (498 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis China's Creative Industries by : Lucy Montgomery

Download or read book China's Creative Industries written by Lucy Montgomery and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China's Creative Industries explores the role of new technologies, globalization and higher levels of connectivity in re-defining relationships between producers and consumers in 21st century China. The evolution of new business models, the impact of state regulation, the rise of entrepreneurial consumers and the role of intellectual property rights are traced through China's film, music and fashion industries. The book argues that social network markets, consumer entrepreneurship and business model evolution are driving forces in the production and commercialization of cultural commodities. In doing so it raises important questions about copyright's role in the business of culture, particularly in a digital age. This insightful book will appeal to post-graduate students and academic researchers in China and Asian studies, intellectual property, cultural studies, film, music and fashion studies, cultural economics and innovation management. People working in the creative industries with an interest in devising strategies for expansion into the Chinese market, as well as people working in the creative industries outside China with an interest in developing successful digital strategies, will also find much to interest them in this book.

The Bodies That Remain

Download The Bodies That Remain PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : punctum books
ISBN 13 : 194744767X
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (474 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Bodies That Remain by : Emmy Beber

Download or read book The Bodies That Remain written by Emmy Beber and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bodies That Remain is a collection of bodies and absences. Through biography, experimental essay and interview, fictional manifestation, and poetic extraction, The Bodies That Remain is a collection of texts and images on the bodies of artists and writers who battled with the frustration of their own physicality and whose work reckoned with these limitations and continued beyond them. The Bodies That Remain looks back at how the identity of these bodies was shaped by the spaces around them, through the retelling of memory, through stories told by others; of how their work, processed by their body, made it possible for others to experience sensations - mourning, desire, or a nostalgia that could not belong to another, to another's body and in capturing this ability, their work confirms the body's urgency. Amongst others, The Bodies That Remain tells the story of Emily Dickinson's decay, the missing grave of Valeska Gert, the voice and sound of the body of Judee Sill, and the derailed body and its work of Jane Bowles. It questions the absent body but broken organs of JT Leroy as they find themselves scattered across texts, and also interrogates the loss of distinction of illness for Jules de Goncourt as syphilis riddled his nervous system. It retrieves the illusory body of Kathy Acker through dream and through horror, sees the morphing body of Michael Jackson in becoming all of the bodies he was asked to be, and looks toward Sylvia Plath and the language of her own body. Contributions include texts and images by: Lynne Tillman (on Jane Bowles), David Rule (on Michael Jackson), Mairead Case (on Judee Sill), Claire Potter (on the Lads of Aran), Jeremy Millar (on Emily Dickinson), Chloé Griffin (on Valeska Gert), Phoebe Blatton (on Brigid Brophy), Susanna Davies-Crook (on Sarah Kane), Travis Jeppensen (on Gary Sullivan), Karen Di Franco (on Mary Butts), Tai Shani (on Mnemesoid), Philip Hoare (on Denton Welch), Heather Phillipson (on a dead dog), Uma Breakdown (on Guage Fanfic), Linda Stuppart (on Kathy Acker), Sharon Kivland (on Jacques Lacan), Harman Bains (on Wilhelm Reich), Pil & Galia Kollectiv (JT Leroy), Kevin Breathnach (on Jules de Goncourt), and Emily LaBarge (on Sylvia Plath).

Late Style and its Discontents

Download Late Style and its Discontents PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0191009938
Total Pages : 285 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Late Style and its Discontents by : Gordon McMullan

Download or read book Late Style and its Discontents written by Gordon McMullan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Late style' is a critical term routinely deployed to characterise the work of selected authors, composers, and creative artists as they enter their last phase of production—often, but not only, in old age. Taken at face value, this terminology merely points to a chronological division in the artist's oeuvre, 'late' being the antonym of 'early' or the third term in the triad 'early-middle-late'. However, almost from its inception, the idea of late style or late work has been freighted with aesthetic associations and expectations that promote it as a special episode in the artist's creative life. Late style is often characterised as the imaginative response made by exceptional talents to the imminence of their death. In their confrontation with death creative artists, critics claim, produce work that is by turns a determination to continue while strength remains, a summation of their life's work and a radical vision of the essence of their craft. And because this creative phenomenon is understood as primarily an existential response to a common fate, so late style is understood as something that transcends the particularities of place, time and medium. Critics seeking to understand late work regularly invoke the examples of Titian, Goethe, and Beethoven as exemplars of what constitutes late work, proposing that something unites the late style of authors, composers, and creative artists who otherwise would not be bracketed together and that lateness per se is a special order of creative work. The essays in this collection resist this position. Ranging across literature, the visual arts, music, and scientific work, the material assembled here looks closely at the material, biographical and other contexts in which the work was produced and seeks both to question the assumptions surrounding late style and to prompt a more critical understanding of the last works of writers, artists and composers.

You Are What You Risk

Download You Are What You Risk PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1643136798
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (431 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis You Are What You Risk by : Michele Wucker

Download or read book You Are What You Risk written by Michele Wucker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 international bestselling author of The Gray Rhino offers a bold new framework for understanding and re-shaping our relationship with risk and uncertainty to live more productive and successful lives. What drives a sixty-four-year-old woman to hurl herself over Niagara Falls in a barrel? Why do we often create bigger risks than the risks we try to avoid? Why are corporate boards newly worried about risky personal behavior by CEOs? Why are some nations quicker than others to recognize and manage risks like pandemics, technological change, and climate crisis? The answers define each person, organization, and society as distinctively as a fingerprint. Understanding the often-surprising origins of these risk fingerprints can open your eyes, inspire new habits, catalyze innovation and creativity, improve teamwork, and provide a beacon in a world that seems suddenly more uncertain than ever. How you see risk and what you do about it depend on your personality and experiences. How you make these cost-benefit calculations depend on your culture, your values, the people in the room, and even unexpected things like what you’ve eaten recently, the temperature, the music playing, or the fragrance in the air. Being alert to these often-unconscious influences will help you to seize opportunity and avoid danger. You Are What You Risk is a clarion call for an entirely new conversation about our relationship with risk and uncertainty. In this ground-breaking, accessible and eminently timely book, Michele Wucker examines why it’s so important to understand your risk fingerprint and how to make your risk relationship work better in business, life, and the world. Drawing on compelling risk stories around the world and weaving in economics, anthropology, sociology, and psychology research, Wucker bridges the divide between professional and lay risk conversations. She challenges stereotypes about risk attitudes, re-frames how gender and risk are related, and shines new light on generational differences. She shows how the new science of “risk personality” is re-shaping business and finance, how healthy risk ecosystems support economies and societies, and why embracing risk empathy can resolve conflicts. Wucker shares insights, practical tools, and proven strategies that will help you to understand what makes you who you are –and, in turn, to make better choices, both big and small.

Hacking Life

Download Hacking Life PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262538997
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Hacking Life by : Joseph M. Reagle, Jr.

Download or read book Hacking Life written by Joseph M. Reagle, Jr. and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an effort to keep up with a world of too much, life hackers sometimes risk going too far. Life hackers track and analyze the food they eat, the hours they sleep, the money they spend, and how they're feeling on any given day. They share tips on the most efficient ways to tie shoelaces and load the dishwasher; they employ a tomato-shaped kitchen timer as a time-management tool.They see everything as a system composed of parts that can be decomposed and recomposed, with algorithmic rules that can be understood, optimized, and subverted. In Hacking Life, Joseph Reagle examines these attempts to systematize living and finds that they are the latest in a long series of self-improvement methods. Life hacking, he writes, is self-help for the digital age's creative class. Reagle chronicles the history of life hacking, from Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack through Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Timothy Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek. He describes personal outsourcing, polyphasic sleep, the quantified self movement, and hacks for pickup artists. Life hacks can be useful, useless, and sometimes harmful (for example, if you treat others as cogs in your machine). Life hacks have strengths and weaknesses, which are sometimes like two sides of a coin: being efficient is not the same thing as being effective; being precious about minimalism does not mean you are living life unfettered; and compulsively checking your vital signs is its own sort of illness. With Hacking Life, Reagle sheds light on a question even non-hackers ponder: what does it mean to live a good life in the new millennium?